Now this is the kind of Dodger promotion I can get on board with. I don't know if the Dodgers learned from last year's Lipstick debacle, but their new gameday promotion selling all-you-can-eat tickets is genius. For $35 a fan can buy a ticket and eat all the Dodger Dogs he can squeeze into his gut. Normally, a ticket and three dogs and you're pushing $35 anyway. This is great. It's like Vegas, you can make your money back at the buffet.

The Dodgers have no idea what they're in for. I'll be stuffing Dodger Dogs into my pockets for the ride home. Midnight snack? How about a Dodger Dog? This is going to be a good summer.

A couple of our writers posted in our admin forum that they didn't like Ripken but couldn't pinpoint why. Here's what I think it is:

Because the media and the baseball establishment has a way of taking ordinary, decent guys and trying to make them into icons when they're not. So then you get hit over the head with how great a guy, how amazing of a person Ripken is over and over again, and it starts to get annoying. Muhammad Ali was an icon - Cal Ripken was just a good player who went about his business. As a person, there was nothing remarkable about him. But the sports are always looking for players they can market and hang their hats on. So they blow these guys out of proportion. And it's easy to start reacting to that and feel - what's so special about this guy? Sure, he's good at baseball - I don't begruge him being an All-Star when he's deserved it, but after a while, can't everyone just quit it with the sucking up? Can't a player just be as good or as bad as he actually is without all this EXTRA - this canonizing the guy, the drooling praise from every corner?

It's like a virus that spreads - people realize a guy is a good player, and that, in addition, he has no obvious public relations baggage (no criminal acts, no run-ins with teammates, etc.), and suddenly, it's safe to praise that player through the roof. After all, the fans like him, your colleagues like him - you won't offend anyone by saying what a great guy he is. In fact, you'll look like a great guy yourself by recognizing and confirming everyone's beliefs about him. So it snowballs, and it gets to the point where the announcers are bending over backwards to make excuses for Ripken's lack of range toward the end of his career or for every boneheaded throw Brett Favre makes. There are a few announcers (Cris Collinsworth (whatever you otherwise think of him) is one) who tell it pretty much like it is, but most just spew whatever inane thoughts cross their habit-entrenched brains, and it's basically just what they hear everywhere else.

So I never liked Ripken. Peyton Manning, either. Maybe that's partly why everyone gives Manning so much flack for not winning in the playoffs - people are so sick of the praise heaped on the guy (great player, ordinary guy). And maybe that's why Mark McGwire's getting scapegoated for the whole steroid era - because he was built up as the savior of baseball for a while, and the episode in front of congress shattered that.

So Ripken and Gwynn deservingly got the Hall of Fame nod (and McGwire did not), but neither was a unanimous selection because at least one voter, Paul Ladewski of the Daily Southtown in Chicago, turned in a blank ballot.

Part of this, he says here, is because in the steriod era you can't be sure who might have been on the juice. Fair enough, except that Ripken had his best years before steroids infiltrated the game, and Gwynn, well, one look at the Padres' Stay Puft Marshmallow Man should be evidence enough of his steroid innocence.

As for being philosophically opposed to unanimous selections in general, Ladewski says, "Walter Johnson, Cy Young and Honus Wagner didn't receive (unanimous) Hall passes. Neither did Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth and Ted Williams. In fact, nobody has in the history of the game."

For a second there, I thought, OK, maybe he has a point. If Babe Ruth can't get 100 percent of the vote, who can? So I checked out the Hall of Fame voting, and, duh, back in the early days there were so many deserving players on the ballot there was no way anyone would get 100 percent of the vote. Votes were split between a number of HoF-worthy players, preventing many from getting in on their first or even second or third ballots. Cy Young, Rogers Hornsby, Lou Gehrig, these guys all came up short in 1936 because the stockpile of HoF-worthy players prevented more than handful from gaining entry. This continued for the next couple decades until the Ellis Island-like line of deserving players was trimmed.

But despite guys like Ladewski, baseball, I'd say, has the best HoF voting system. Any HoF voting system is going to have its flaws. Basketball, though, seemingly lets in anybody who ever dribbled and if you want to get into the football HoF you better have won a Super Bowl, especially if you're a lineman or defensive player. Baseball, though, has it about right -- a couple guys at most each year, and most are deserving (Gary Carter notwithstanding).

If Shawne Merriman continues on his current career pattern (and of course that's a huge 'if'), his numbers would easily qualify him for the Hall of Fame. Perhaps, if the aforementioned were to happen, it might spark some emotion given his steroid suspension this year. However, he's won accolades this current season (named to the Pro Bowl, AP's All-Pro team) despite the fact that he was proven to be on performance-enhancing drugs and received a four-game suspension. Though admittedly the Hall of Fame is more heavily debated, if people don't care about Merriman's indiscretion this year, why would they care 15 years down the road when voting for induction?

Mark McGwire, on the other hand, was never proven to have taken steroids, yet he is being crucified by the media based on speculation and hearsay (although I believe, like most people, his "I'm not here to talk about the past" was as scathing an indictment as an actual admission). This proof isn't an iota as solid as that against Merriman (not counting the un-prohibited andro discovered on McGwire's locker), and isn't close to the leaked grand jury testimony against Jason Giambi or Barry Bonds.

A few questions: are steroids more acceptable in football? Is the home run such a sacred institution in American sport that its defilement evokes greater emotion than any result of Merriman's cheating? In terms of McGwire v. Giambi, is Giambi let off the hook a little because he apologized, despite more solid proof, whereas McGwire appeared deceptive and devious in refusing to testify? If Giambi were to break the single season HR record, would he receive the same scrutiny as McGwire when up for the Hall or would he get a pass?

I'd be interesting to learn which Hall of Fame voter cast one lone vote for Jay Buhner. This is the first time I've really ever looked closely at the HOF voting -- who have been some other ridiculous vote receivers in the past?

The 2007 baseball hall of fame election results come out Tuesday. From what we can tell, Mark McGwire won't be elected on the first ballot. Many polls have him as low as 25 percent of voters.

Many writers won't vote for McGwire because of his alleged use of steroids -- mostly from the fact that when testifying before Congress he refused to speak about the issue. That was seen as admission of guilt.

But similar polls show that most writers would vote for Barry Bonds despite his cloud of steroid guilt.
David O'Brien in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is one example when he says:

"Iím convinced he used a variety of steroids and that his home-run records are fraudulent.
However, Iíd vote for Barry because he already had Hall of Fame numbers BEFORE his biceps, chest and head grew alarmingly and significantly in a span of several months when he was closer to 40 years old than 30 (yeah, thatís normal, Bonds supporters keep telling yourselves that). "

This logic just makes no sense no matter where you stand on the steroids issue.

So O'Brien will not vote for one player because he used steroids, but will vote for another because O'Brien can somehow tell "when" this steroid usage started impacting his stats?

If you are not going to vote for one player on the steroid issue, you can't vote for the other. Cheating is cheating.
Should we vote for Pete Rose or Shoeless Jackson because they had hall of fame numbers before they made their transgressions?

And this gets more preposterous because McGwire has never said he took steroids, never was caught and played in an era when the substance wasn't even illegal. Meanwhile Bonds has reportedly admitted in court he took steroids (if by accident). So O'Brien will vote for the guy who by the standards of our legal system (innocent until proven guilty) isn't guilty, but will vote for the guy who is tainted by facts.

Too combat this logic, O'Brien and other writers try to justify their non-vote for McGwire by saying he was "one dimensional." Never mind that McGwire actually has a higher career OBP (.394) compared to shoo-inn entry this year Tony Gwynn (.388). Somehow this myth is growing that McGwire's career value was only tied to his homerun prowess and thus his steroid use made it void. Some even compare McGwire to Dave Kingman (he of career .302 OBP). Meanwhile, Bonds was more of an all-around player so his steroid use is acceptable. But McGwire's career was more than just home runs. Writers just can't see beyond that since they need to offer McGwire as their first example for the steroid problem. (Never mind the bigger issues that the owners, league and probably writers looking the other way, were all complicit in the steroids era.)

So that logic just doesn't cut it. If you are not going to vote for someone because they cheated by using steroids, use the same standard against everyone else whenever they cheated during their career.